


Different Now

by StanningJay



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Agents of SHIELD, Angst, Don’t copy to another site, F/M, FitzSimmons - Freeform, Inhumans (Marvel), Jemma Simmons - Freeform, Leo Fitz - Freeform, Light Smut, do not copy to another site, fitzskye - Freeform, i got nervous, inhuman story line, pre smut, season 2 fic, shield season 2, terragenesis
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-01-04 04:01:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21191213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StanningJay/pseuds/StanningJay
Summary: Leo Fitz is healing from nearly drowning, Skye has just emerged from terragenesis and no one on the bus yet knows what that means.





	1. The Way My Body Used to Behave

**Author's Note:**

> This fic takes place beginning during s2, and was inspired by one of my favorite moments of the show--when Fitz comforts skye and helps her hide her newfound powers as best he can. My biggest warning in this fic is that I don't ship Fitz-Skye at all and I'm a huge FItzsimmons shipper, but this isn't a Fitzsimmons fic. Season two after Tripp's death brought out a real ugly color in Jemma and I want to explore one of the darkest periods in their relationship through Fitz seeking comfort with someone else. 
> 
> Beware the Angst!

Leo stared at the monitor of his tablet, eyes darting around the kitchenette. He sucked in a breath and checked the results again, docking the tablet on the counter to stop his hands shaking so much he couldn’t even read it. The results had finished rendering just as he’d begun to steep his mug of tea. The hand holding the mug was trembling so badly that steaming water was spilling over the brim, scalding his knuckles. He winced.

“Fitz?”

He dropped the mug. It shattered on the tile, tea flowing around Simmons’ boots.

“S-S-sorry Jemma,” he said. “My hands, they’re still um—” he closed his eyes, looking at the ceiling snapping the fingers of his right hand, covering his eyes with his left.

“Unsteady?” Unsteady, yes. Her voice was unsteady, too.

“That. Yes.”

He brushed the sleep button on his tablet, looking down at the mess on the floor. A ceramic fragment with Grumpy Cat’s face on it peered up at him, judgmental.

“Oh, dear,” Jemma sighed, “That was Coulson’s favorite.”

“My favorite what?”

Leo nearly jumped out of his shoes at the sound of the Director’s voice.

“Erm,” he said.

“Mug,” supplied Jemma. She reached for the dust pan in the broom cupboard.

Coulson glanced down at their feet, frowning slightly. “That was not my favorite mug. My favorite is the one Skye got me for my birthday that says, ‘World’s Greatest Director.’ Obviously.”  
Jemma grinned as she stooped to sweep up the shards and toss them in the bin. “Of course, Sir.”

They both looked at Leo, expectantly as always. Like he should contribute to the conversation, be part of the banter, like he would have done Before. “Erm,” he said again, eyes flitting back and forth between their faces.

He fled.

He got about a dozen paces from the kitchen before he remembered the bloody tablet with the damning results right there on the home screen. He ran back, snatched it off the table and made a proper flight, all the way to the garage.

Breathing heavily, he looked around. Why was he here? Surely he’d chosen this destination on purpose. He did everything with purpose. Well, he used to. Before. He knuckled his forehead in frustration. “Hey, Turbo.” Mack’s steady voice cut through the fog. That’s why, that’s why he came here. Leo had fled to the garage because he knew that if he ignored Mac, sank down on the floor looking at the rendered data on his tablet, Mack wouldn’t say anything. He’d just smile, shake his head and pull the welding mask back down over his face and return to work. Which is precisely what happened.

Now he could look, really look at the data. He called up the sample taken from Raina’s blood, and the sample of Skye’s and it was right there in plain English. Plain to him anyway—and plain to Jemma, if he let her get her hands on this. Three humans had gone into the chamber, the temple, in the alien city and, looking at these results, Leo had no idea who or what had come out.

Trip certainly hadn’t. _Don’t think about that_. Thinking about Trip made his head hurt. _Use your whole brain_, he told himself. _Your whole brain on this_. Mac had said that to him, when he’d taught him some of the finer points of Halo.

Something was there, something in Skye’s blood, sleeping in her veins—it had stirred, briefly last year when Jemma had injected her with the GH serum. It woke up in that temple. The same thing must surely have been there in Raina’s blood, too. Something that allowed them to enter that chamber and leave it in once piece.

Suddenly, the solution was there, plain as day. He had learned a lot from Skye over the past year and a half.

When he returned to the medical bay a bit later, he’d deleted the file and replaced it with an older one—data from a previous sample of her blood—and erased every trace he’d meddled with anything at all. He took an enormous breath at the door to the lab; he used to feel so at home here. It was his domain, his place, his and Jemma’s—but now it was only hers. She’d only just returned from being undercover at Hydra and all of a sudden the glass walls around the lab were around her, too, between the two of them. She’d been gone for months and simply waltzed in, with her new hair and her old smiles, and evicted Leo from the sacred space they used to share. Without a word, without meaning to—he hoped, and now he stood like an orphan in a Dickens story with his nose pressed against the glass.

Jemma stood beside Skye’s bed, the two of them laughing together. Jemma fussed over Skye’s pillows and Skye tried to swat her hand away. Leo beheld them together, watching how Skye’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. How those eyes that used to be so bold now flitted nervously around the room, the slight tremor in her hands making him shove his own into the pockets of his cardigan, tablet squashed between his bicep and his rib cage.

Strange how he and Skye seemed to have so much more in common now than he and Jemma did, or at least—something so important in common. This.

“Erm,” he said, by way of announcing himself. He chewed his bottom lip as they looked at him. Rather, as Jemma looked at him and Skye looked at her fingernails.  
“I’ve got the-the, uh,” Leo squeezed his eyes shut tight. Whole Brain. “The, uh.” He wanted to scream in frustration. He wanted to spike the tablet like an American footballer. He wanted to slap the expectant, patronizing half smile from Jemma’s face.

He didn’t though.

“Uh.” Looking at his shoes, he reached for the tablet at his side and brandished it at the two women.

“The results?” Said Skye, sounding a little breathless. Leo’s eyes snapped to hers. When he looked up he noticed there was a tiny crease between Jemma’s eyebrows. She glanced at Skye for a fraction of a second, and Leo knew she was angry that she had been beaten to finishing his sentence. _Good_.

“Yes,” he said, trying to conjure up a smile. “All Clear.”

Skye laughed, a true laugh, and it broke his heart to lie to her. She collapsed back on her pillows, beaming.

“Well, then,” Said Jemma, all warmth again, “There seems to be no reason to get you out of this sad little quarantine box and back to your bunk—once I’ve double checked your injuries of course.”

“Okay, Mom,” said Skye, rolling her eyes.

Jemma excused herself, going to check Skye’s bunk for fresh linens. Leo crossed the room to her bedside, and under the pretext of adjusting her blood pressure cuff he leaned forward. “I lied,” he whispered. Her eyes widened, where before had been only a frenetic anxiety was now a true fear. “I lied, Skye.” And for once his voice was steady as he held her gaze.

She stammered as much as he was now wont to do. The monitors beeped frantically as her heart rate spiked.

“Sh-shhh-shuh,” Leo ground his teeth, his traitorous tongue vibrating uselessly behind them. So apparently, five steady syllables were the most he could manage.

“Fitz,” her voice a squeak as Jemma’s neatly arranged surgical tools began vibrate on the bedside table. The equipment in the lab wobbled, and Leo felt the floor move beneath his feet. 

A glass beaker danced over the edge and smashed. “Whoa, whoa---whoa,” he said, spreading his palms, begging the room to calm down. “What’s, What’s that I thought—I thought we were out of the uh, the erm.” _Airspace_, his mind shouted, _Airspace around the temple, away from the city you bloody stumbletongued idiot_! It didn’t matter though, he knew what he meant. And Skye wasn’t listening. She was looking wildly around the room, and as she did the tremors worsened.  
Skye let out a shriek and it fired through him like a bolt of lightning.

“_Skye what the bloody hell is doing that_?” he got out in a single breath as he stumbled to one knee beside the broken glass, the floor of the bus tipping him worse than any turbulence. He was dimly aware of an alarm sounding—of May’s angry, curt voice slicing through the air, barking orders to strap in. Skye half slid, half fell out of the bed, landing in a crouch beside Fitz, still half connected to about a dozen bloody machines that Jemma had her hooked into. She leaned toward his ear, her breath rapid and hot sending another bolt down his vertebrae.

“I think it’s me,” and she snatched the sidearm from the holster at his waist and Iced herself.

As her body hit the ground the plane steadied. The alarm continued and Mack reached them first.

“Turbo, you okay?” He couldn’t even stutter, his useless tongue clamped between his teeth, so he nodded. Mack crouched beside Skye, scooping her up as easily as if she were a kitten and putting her back in the bed. He tucked her in, big hands tender, brow creased in worry as Jemma came skidding back to the lab.

“Skye hit her head,” Mack supplied before she could ask, his confidence in the guess as to what happened definitely more convincing than any lie Leo’s jumbled brain could have mustered. Leo realized he was still nodding like an idiot, so he stopped, but then felt strange so he started again. Jemma looked at him with concern.

“Are you alright, Fitz?” Her musical voice was so timid, like someone striking a windchime but holding the bell at the same time so the noise came out scared, breathy, dulled.  
He hated her for it.

Leo turned on his heel and stomped out of the room, feeling like he spent half his life fleeing these days. He slammed into Hunter.

“You alright, mate?” Hunter steadied Leo with strong hands, peering at him in that quizzical, street wise way he had. At least when Hunter asked it, it sounded normal—like a question you’d ask someone on a plane that just very nearly crashed into the Atlantic, not like a question you’d ask someone trying to remember how to turn on the stove. Hunter didn’t know him Before, though—no more than Mac had. Maybe that’s why it was easier with them now.

Leo felt the urge to nod again in answer, but instead clamped his hands on the side of his head, steadying it. “Y-yeah.” He continued toward his bunk, shutting himself in and all of them out.

Hours later, someone pounded on the door.

“G-go away,” he managed, biting hard on his pillow, biting back a scream.

“Fitz, it’s me,” Skye said, her voice hard and determined. Leo unwound his limbs and shuffled over, opening the door for her while looking at his shoelaces.  
She didn’t wait for an invitation, shoving roughly past him. She didn’t close the door, which he knew would have seemed suspicious to those outside. “Fitz,” she said in a low, urgent voice. “You knew. You said you lied. What happened to me?”

Leo didn’t open his mouth. If he heard himself say “erm,” one more time he would blow his own head off. He shook his head instead, shutting his eyes, humming like a confused animal, or a bloody child. She grabbed his shoulders and shook him so hard he thought his fillings would rattle out of his skull.

“Look at me,” she hissed, and Leo knew she’d be yelling if she didn’t care about being overheard. “What is wrong with me?”

His body kept moving after she released him, and he couldn’t seem to stop it as he rocked back and forth. _Whole brain. Whole brain, you worthless prick_!

It seemed to take years but he reached across the chasm between them and grabbed her hand in both of his. They both looked down in surprise as his entire body stilled. A beat of stunned silence. He looked up, meeting her eyes. Steady. “Nothing,” he said. His voice wavered but the word was there. “Nothing,” he repeated, stronger this time. “You’re Skye. You’re just different now.”

She swallowed, her eyes glossy with tears she refused to let fall. He reached one of his hands up and cupped her cheek, his entire whole brain forcing his eyes to bore into hers, willing her to hear him, willing himself to remain still.

“And there’s nothing wrong with that.” He drew her hands up close to his lips, like a stranger was pulling at marionette strings, and brushed a kiss across her white knuckles.  
In a blink she’d pressed her forehead to his, hard—and in another, she’d vanished, whipping out past the door and slamming it shut behind her.


	2. Let Slip My Guard, Let Go Of the Rudder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leo feels himself going to pieces during a meeting, and Skye holds him together.

“Okay, so Agent May will brief us on our transition out of the airspace above the alien city.” Coulson looked at May, who stood at his right elbow.

May chewed her tongue for a minute before straightening up, rolling her shoulders and jutting her jaw forward. “We’re out.”

Silence.

“Okay,” said Coulson. “Thanks for that, Agent May.”

Coulson shuffled his feet, cleared his throat. “Alright, now, Agent Simmons, the floor is yours.”

Leo watched as Jemma stood. He sat across from her. She smiled around at the room and spoke in the prim, clipped, perfect—British—way she had when she was nervous.

“What’s important now is that the threat of the Alien contagion be controlled.” Leo glanced at Skye.

“Contagion?” Bobbi looked at Jemma evenly. “What evidence was there of a pathogen?”

_The right question._ Perhaps he had misjudged Bobbi. She had seemed like a less buttoned-up version of May when she’d first come aboard the bus with Jemma, both fresh out of their under cover Op at Hydra. She was a specialist—the type who asked most her questions with a boot on someone’s throat. She and her lethal batons had gotten Jemma safely out of Hydra’s clutches, and Leo could have loved her for that. There was something sly about her, though, something about the way she’d slipped into life here. Too easy. But her brows furrowed as she asked Jemma about the possibility of a contagion, and he saw something in her eyes he hadn’t bothered to notice before that made him think she might just be someone he could talk to, after all.

But then, Ward had been fluent six languages and trusting him had been a grave error.

Suddenly Leo gripped the arms of his chair as if it were an ejector seat. The sound of Jemma screaming his name before the sea swallowed him whole seared across his brain like a lit fuse. Her tears, the salt, the ocean. Ward. His face as he pushed the button sending him and Jemma out of that plane.

The water had buried him and laid him bare all at once and suddenly Leo was drowning. How could no one see he was drowning, right there—how could no one see? Everyone was still talking and Jemma was still discussing the necessary eradication of Alien threats, and no one could see that he was dying. _What did you think of Ward for, you fool? You can barely think of your own breakfast. _

A tiny inhale, and every time he inhaled he was back in that pod at the bottom of the sea, blowing the window out on the slim hope Jemma would survive.

He hadn’t meant to survive. The ocean was rushing in. Leo felt like water was in his lungs, filling them, but he was sitting there bone dry in a conference room and his leg was going like a jackhammer into the floor and then suddenly—he was still.

“Fitz?”

Everyone stared at him, and he was sure they knew. Sure they were hoping he’d just drown quietly on dry land beside them and were disappointed when he didn’t, but here he was, alive—to their utmost disappointment, his own most of all.

But there was a small, strong hand on his knee below the table and he found his entire mind quieting. His eyes darted at Skye but she was looking anywhere but at him.

“S-Sorry, what?” He scooched himself up straighter in his seat, and the hand on his leg gave a squeeze and didn’t release.

“Fitz,” said Coulson, “Agent Simmons was suggesting we modify the Icer, modify the guns in a way that could subdue something….inhuman.”

“Well,” he said, trying to buy time.

“Turbo and I could work it together, Sir,” Mack there, to rescue him, as always. “I can be his hands.”

Leo’s actual own hand fell below the table, grasping feverishly at the foreign one on his leg. He looked at Coulson and nodded, as if he and Mac had planned it, all the while his fingers scrabbled to entwine with the ones on his thigh. Skye beside him, Mac behind him. Coulson and Jemma and May were there, too, he reminded himself. Not There, not There like Jemma had been, like they’d all been, Before, but here still. Near.

Coulson dismissed them, returning to his office off the briefing room. Everyone slipped out. Mack clapped Leo’s shoulder on the way back to the garage. Skye’s pinky finger grazed the inseam of his jeans as she stood and left without a word. His brain immediately fired up into the maths. What is the formula that calculated the force of a squeeze, in friendship? What is the distance over time, of a lingering touch? How many beats per minute to determine a pulse quickened by something besides fear?

How many bold British brows, framing a subtle glare, a glare with a singularity, did it take for him to be certain he wasn’t crazy—at least not in this?

What is the hypotenuse of a triangle between three points, and what is the coefficient of friction that will combust them?

How many steps of her leaving the room, over seconds, did it take for him to fall apart?

Skye’s bunk was near the kitchen, and Leo stood by the sink washing his hands. Well, five actual minutes ago he was washing his hands. Now he stood scrubbing off his dermis. Two mugs sat cooling on the counter, the strings of tea bags dangling over the sides. He had begun washing his hands because he didn’t want to smash any more glass, not when he felt so close to fracture himself.

By the time he kicked at the door of her quarters, his knuckles were raw and threatening to bleed.

She slid the door open to her bunk. She cocked an eyebrow, expectant—but not in a patronizing way. It was more like a challenge. No one had challenged him since—well, not on purpose, anyway. He suspected his shoelaces were conspiring against him, though, the bloody things, fraying and tripping him up. Bunny ears or criss-cross? How did he do them up, Before?

It wasn’t until her pointer finger rested below his chin, nudging it upwards, did he even realize he’d been staring at his shoes.

He held up the mugs. She wrapped her fingers around one. “I hate tea.”

She took a sip and nearly did a spit take. “Fitz that is just awful,” she said, half laughing. “It’s stone cold!”

Embarrassed, he tried to explain. “I had, I—I had to,” he looked down at his now empty hand, “scrub?”

He looked at her but she was looking at his hand, the thin skin on his knuckles pulled taught, cracked, and weak like his bones would slice through at any moment. “I should, I s-should, um,” he jerked his chin toward the door, fighting himself. Fight or flight? A half step backward toward the door proved flight was winning out, but Skye slid around him and planted herself in his path. Fight.

It was Skye all over—just as it was her who grabbed him by the collar of his misbuttoned shirt and yanked him forward, her who caught him when he stumbled into her. She wrapped him tight in her arms—arms grown so strong under May’s careful tutelage, and placed one hand at the small of his back, the other on the side of his face. Leo went to putty under her touch, trying to will himself to vibrate hard enough to achieve teleportation and escape her grasp.

“Will you just hold still?” She asked, exasperated as her fingers tightened on his cheek. He couldn’t though, he couldn’t stay still so instead he lunged forward, colliding with her mouth, taking a moment of satisfaction in the hitch in her breath before his mouth closed over hers—knowing he’d surprised her—but as his tongue plunged between her lips his mind went blank for the first time in weeks, possibly for the first time ever, blissfully brilliantly blank.

Not only was his mind blank, but his body was steady. He planted his foot and turned, directing Skye backward. If his theory was right she could split him apart at the seams but now, now he was in control, control of himself and it spurred him on. He scrabbled back with one hand, slamming shut the door to the bunk as Skye stepped backward toward her bed. He unglued his lips from hers and the breathy little moan that slipped out of her mouth as be paused to gain his breath made him grin. “You sure you want me to hold still?” he asked, steady as a stone, pushing his forehead into hers.

She was grinning now, too. “Don’t you dare,” she growled, yanking the buttons on his shirt apart and pulling them both down onto the bed.

Her head rested on his chest, after, tracing slow circles with her index finger. Leo’s arm wrapped around her shoulders, pressing her body tighter against his, their legs tangled under the blankets.

“You surprised me,” she said suddenly.

“Mmm?” he asked, brushing the fringe to the side on her forehead, trailing his thumb across her brow. “And how’s that?”

She shifted, her torso lying across his chest, her fingers interlocked just above his heart. Skye cocked an eyebrow. “You’ve got moves.”

Leo glanced at her lazily, through hooded eyes. “Moves?”

She gave a little scoff. “Uh, yeah, like, _major _moves.”

He frowned. “And that surprised you.”

Skye chewed her bottom lip, but her teeth poked out in a half smile, sheepish. “A bit.”

Annoyed, he shifted back on his elbows, sitting up. “Why does _everyone,” _he muttered, “Always think I’m a bloody—”

“A ‘bloody’ what?” She asked, putting on an awful accent as she mocked his tone.

“A bloody virgin. The surprise stings, Skye, I got to say.”

She laughed, kissing his chest. He felt her grinning into his skin. “Almost as surprised I was to find out you had this much chest hair.”

“Unbelievable.”

Skye reached down off the bed, squirming to grab his cardigan, wrapping it tight around herself like a bathrobe. “I’m thirsty,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed, untucking her hair from the back of the sweater.

“Alright, Skye, but I’m gonna need a minute here,” said Leo distractedly, running a hand through his hair.

She laughed again. “No I mean really. You want something? You never finished your tea.”

She stood and slipped out the door, and Leo liked the look of her tan legs sticking out from the bottom of his cardigan. Leo glanced at Skye’s phone on the bedside table, showing the time at 1:03 AM.

Suddenly unsure, Leo wondered if she wanted him to stay here. He swung his legs over the edge of her bunk, sitting up and stretching. As he wondered what she wanted him to do, he looked around the room, searching for his underwear and pants and his—

A gasp from the kitchen.

“Simmons.” Skye’s voice broke, nervous.

“Skye.” Jemma made her name a question, a question that set Leo’s hands shaking again as he tried to wiggle into his jeans. But as always, she recovered quickly. “Couldn’t sleep either?”

If Skye answered, Leo couldn’t hear it.

“Well,” Jemma said brightly, her voice so brittle he could imagine her whole face shattering, “I’ve got my tea, I’m going to head back to bed. Good night!”

Skye returned a beat later, a diet coke clutched in her fingers. She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “You should go.”

And of course, he fled. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter comes from the song "Plain Sailing Weather," by Frank Turner.


	3. I Did Something Weird Last Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team works on a new version of the Icer. Mack tries to confront Leo, and he tries to confront Skye in turn--but she has other ideas.

Leo looked at himself in the mirror, his fingers shook as he touched the scratches Skye’s nails left on his chest, as the pads of his fingertips brushed the spot where her lips had been, biting the base of his clavicle. He shivered.

  
So much had been seized from his control recently, when he’d leaned in for the kiss he thought he’d been grabbing control but now, as he stood trembling by the bathroom mirror he realized he wasn’t so much taking control but choosing to give in. Choosing when to fall apart. It was thrilling. He fussed with the knotted towel around his waist and went to leave the showers as Mack walked in.Mack’s chest was bare, a toothbrush clenched between his teeth, a towel over his shoulder. His dark eyes moved over the scratches on Leo’s chest, the shadow of a bruise on his neck. Instinctively, Leo reached his hand up to cover it. Mac raised his eyebrows, removed his toothbrush and spat into the sink.  
Leo mumbled something about turbulence by way of explanation.

  
“I’ll bet,” said Mac, squirting toothpaste onto his brush. He looked in the mirror, directly at Leo and winked.

After breakfast, Bobbi, Mac, Leo and Jemma were in the lab working on the new design for the icer. As usual, Jemma was arguing for a biological fix. She wanted to increase the

dosage of dendrotoxin per round in order to provide greater stopping power.

“That could be dangerous,” Bobbi said, her brow deeply creased as she read Jemma’s plans for the more concentrated formula. “The goal is to contain, not eliminate isn’t it?”

“Well I think we can all agree that the first priority is to neutralize this threat,” said Jemma, in a matter of fact tone.

“Do you even—d’you even,” Leo choked on the words, thinking of Skye.

“Do you even understand the threat yet, Simmons?” Bobbi asked, placing a firm hand on Leo’s shoulder. He thanked her silently.

“Of course I don’t,” Jemma said, throwing up her hands, as if this was obvious. “It’s completely, well--alien.”

“I’m with Simmons,” Mack chimed in. He rubbed his forearms and his expression darkened, and Leo knew he was recalling the Kree symbols burning into his flesh as they poisoned his mind. Leo shivered at the memory himself, and he wasn’t the one who’d been possessed. Mack almost killed Jemma, Bobbi and Coulson, to name a few—while he was an unwilling passenger in his own body.

“Fitz you’re awfully quiet,” said Bobbi.

Three sets of eyes stared at him. He knew Jemma was waiting for him to agree with her; the two were usually one mind.  
But not in this.

“J-Jemma,” he began, gripping the arms of his chair, palms already slick with sweat. This was important, vitally important, to get right. “What, erm, what makes you so sure there’s a—there’s a—”

“A contagion?” Asked Bobbi for him. Jemma’s eyes flashed.

“You didn’t see Raina.”

“We saw Skye, though,” Said Bobbi. “She’s fine.”

Leo swallowed.

“That’s true,” said Mack thoughtfully. “If that gas was some kind of disease wouldn’t it have hit Skye too?”

Jemma was fed up. “Oh honestly,” she said. “Just because an illness is communicated between hosts doesn’t mean it always takes root there. Have you never eaten at the same restaurant as someone who got food poisoning? There could be any number of reasons Skye didn’t get infected, including pure dumb luck—or, or her body had antibodies already or,” Jemma’s eyes slid out of focus and then snapped to Leo’s face.

He did his best to look evenly back at her as if he wasn’t watching her brain sink the puzzle pieces into place. He knew that what happened to Skye wasn’t technically a contagion but Jemma’s guess was still way too close to the mark. And she knew it.

“But her bloodwork came back negative,” said Bobbi, “The results looked nothing like Raina’s.”

“Yes, well,” said Jemma, not taking her shrewd eyes off of Leo’s face as she answered Bobbi. “Be that as it may. Our current Icers didn’t affect her.”

“W-well, um, perhaps we uh,” Leo spun in the wheelie chair, “Like not how but, why?”

Jemma frowned, “Oh, that’s exactly right Fitz,” she said, “we can’t really alter the unit or the rounds without knowing why they didn’t effect Raina.” She raced over to her computer terminal and without hesitation Leo propelled himself out of his chair to follow her and for a second it felt normal, the two of them working a problem together. Until she looked up at him from the computer chair and he saw her eyes dart to the mark on his neck. Leo cleared his throat as Jemma forcibly tore her eyes away and back to the screen. She pulled up Raina’s bloodwork.

“I wish we had a larger sample of Raina’s blood,” sighed Jemma, squinting at the screen. “We could observe it reacting with the dendrotoxin.”

Suddenly, Leo remembered Skye icing herself in the med bay. Clearly, whatever traits she shared with Raina didn’t extend to protection against the icer units. He could hardly tell Jemma that, though, so instead he pulled out his side arm and ejected the icer rounds into his hands. He jingled them together.

“W-what if, um, bags?”

Everyone stared. Leo ground his teeth. “Beans.”

“You’re losing us Turbo,” said Mack, snapping his fingers a few times in front of Leo’s face. “Whole brain.”

“Right, right. Erm. Bean Bags. Shot gun.”

“You thinking of a shot gun icer with…bean bag rounds full of that dendrotoxin?”

He nodded, exhaling, deeply relieved that he’d been understood. Mack turned to Jemma. “Could that work?”

“I’m not certain I even understand,” she said. “What would the benefit be of something like that?”

Getting Mack to follow the loose threads of his idea had been hard enough, and Leo definitely couldn’t explain any further.

“Well,” said Bobbi suddenly, “the rounds would have a wider surface area, wouldn’t they?”

“Well, yes presumably.”

“So that would mean a wider dispersal area for the dendrotoxin.”

“And those rounds have high stopping power, physically, but aren’t lethal.”

“Oh I see,” said Jemma turning to Leo. “So we’d have something stronger physically to subdue a threat in its tracks as well as a quicker dispersal of the same dosage of the toxin over a wider area of the target!”

Leo nodded.

“Fitz that’s very creative I must say,” said Jemma excitedly. “It may not be a perfect solution but it gives me an idea as well—perhaps we could develop a whole range of non-lethal weapons with a different styles of delivering the icer to targets. Perhaps one with a net cartridge for capture or a gas? Can you and Mack get started on designing the new housing for a prototype?”

“Sure can,” said Mack. “Let’s hit it.” The two left while Jemma and Bobbi moved to examine the icer rounds Leo had ejected from his sidearm, already discussing possible mods.

As they neared the garage, Mack shot Leo a sideways glance. “So, you wanna talk about it?”

Self consciously, he reached up and covered the side of his neck with his hand and shook his head.

“Okay,” said Mack with a small laugh. “You let me know if that changes, Turbo.”

It felt wonderful to have something to work on, though mostly all he did was get in Mack’s way and drop the tools he tried to pick up. They came up with a few possible designs for models for prototypes and then called it a day, going back to the lounge to play some video games after dinner. Leo could sort of tell that Mack wanted to do a little probing, and he was certain Mack surmised at least some of what had transpired between himself and Skye the night before, but he let it go.

As if her ears had been burning, Skye entered the lounge with her laptop under her arm and a soda can in her opposite hand. Wordlessly, she sat on the floor, drawing her thin legs into a comfortable, cross-legged position in front of the sofa. She pressed her back against Leo’s shins, nestling slightly between them like it was the easiest thing in the world. Mack let out a low whistle, shaking his head from side to side in disbelief. Skye flipped open her laptop and began picking away on the keys. Leo was very distracted from the game all of a sudden, by the feel of Skye’s ribs moving against his legs, shifting under her skin with every inhale—and more so by the way she swept her hair over one shoulder, exposing the back of her neck. It was a very tempting target, and he could feel his mouth run dry at the thought of leaning down and brushing his lips just below her hairline. Most distracting of all were her fingers moving across the keys—clever, nimble, graceful. He couldn’t help thinking of those fingers making fast work of the buttons of his shirt, the zipper on his jeans…

“You blew it Turbo,” said Mack, gesturing at the screen. Leo’s eyes snapped to the television where his character’s corpse was getting viciously teabagged by his killer.

“Ah, s-sorry Mack,” he cleared his throat and watched the re-spawn count down. Leo tried to renew his interest in the game, moving methodically through the level. Having Skye there seemed to steady him in some ways, he made a few head shots that had Mack whistling appreciatively as their rivals from across the globe spammed them with frustrated messages. Her body pressed against his legs seemed like an anchor—his hands were still and his mind was quiet.

After a while, Skye finished whatever she was working on, snapped her computer closed, and said, “’Night guys.”

When her long hair had whipped around the corner, Mack shook his head again.

“Damn,” he said.

“What?” said Leo, distracted, as he planted a few digital claymores around the base of a guard tower.

Mack hit pause on the game. “Look at me, man.”

Leo sighed, turning on the couch. He drew his legs up under his chin. “Yeah?”

“This is gonna end bad, Fitz.”

He registered the discontinued use of his nickname. Mack was taking this intrapersonal paradigm shift very seriously indeed. “I dunno what you’re talking about,” said Leo, fussing with a loose thread on the cuff of his cardigan.

“Damn, when I saw your little love bite I assumed you and Simmons finally stopped dancing around and got your acts together.”

“Yeah, well,” said Leo, unwrapping his limbs and standing up, “We didn’t.”

He ignored Mack trying to call him back into the lounge and stomped off toward his bunk. Muttering to himself about privacy, he slipped off his sweater and hung it on a peg on the wall. He pulled the door closed and squatted down to untie his shoes, hands slightly shaking so it took a few tries.  
Someone cleared their throat.

Leo toppled backwards onto his arse in surprise, looking up to see Skye curled up beneath the covers of his bed, folding down a page in a book.

“W-what’re you reading?” He asked her.

She flipped her hand so he could see the cover, flashing him a shy little smile.

“Six Easy Pieces?” He said, surprised.

“Yeah, I swiped it from Coulson’s office. I heard you talking about it once.”

“It’s one of my favorites,” he admitted. “H-how, um, how’re you liking it?”

She chewed her lip. “I hate it.”

They laughed for a moment. Leo stood, crossing his arms over his chest. “Wh-what’re you doing in here, Skye?” His eyes darted from the floor to her eyes, and back again—the conversation, or lack thereof, with Mack still quite fresh in his mind.

She gave a shrug and pretended to study the back cover of the book.

“Look at me,” he said. She didn’t. “S-so, you’re just going to sleep with me, steal my favorite--my favorite sweater, kick me out, then turn up--” his sentence ended in a flurry of feeble gestures. He pressed his fist to his forehead.

Skye didn’t answer right away. She placed the closed book on Leo’s bedside table and sat up, letting the blankets fall to her waist. She was completely naked.

“Um,” said Leo.

She met his eye. “That was sort of my plan, yeah. You got an issue with that?”

He shook his head, mind full of a pleasant humming sound. Skye stood up, letting the rest of the blankets hit the floor and walked toward him. She leaned forward, pressing against him as she reached around behind him to click the lock closed on the door. Leo felt, dimly, that he’d been angry at her, but that didn’t stop him from grabbing her tiny waist and crushing her body even closer to his. He trailed one of his knuckles up her spine and slid his other hand down to grasp her hip bone. Her teeth found his jaw, nibbling along till she reached his earlobe, as her hands found the buttons of his shirt. He smiled.

“What,” she asked, and he was pleased to hear her a little breathless.

“N-nothing,” he said, kissing her nose. “I just pictured your hands doing this. Earlier.”

Skye returned his smile before kissing him hungrily. He bit her bottom lip, hard enough to make her gasp. She pulled his shirt the rest of the way off before turning to push him toward the bed, her nimble fingers working their way into his belt buckle and yanking it open. She broke the kiss, focusing on sliding down his jeans, so Leo cradled her face in both hands, brushing his thumbs across her cheekbones, pulling her lips back to his own. Leo’s jeans fell down to pool at his feet, and Skye pushed her fingers into his chest, giving him a playful shove. He allowed himself to be steered down onto the bed, reclining back on his elbows, as Skye straddled his hips, smiling wickedly down at him, tossing her hair back over her shoulders. He drank in the sight of her, memorizing every inch of her skin, and he knew that she could tell the effect she was having on him by the powerful look on her face. He anchored himself by grabbing her hips, letting his head fall back down to the mattress and closing his eyes.

Skye stayed with him in his bunk that night, curled up facing the wall wrapped in Leo’s arms. He loved how steady he felt with her beside him, his chest pressing against her bare back, her slow breathing a lullaby. The last thing he remembered before drifting in an extremely satisfied sleep was pressing his lips to the nape of Skye’s neck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to add a wee bit of smut but I got nervous. Sorry for the long wait between chapters! hoping to make it up this weekend and bang out another chapter!
> 
> PS the title is from the song "I Did Something Weird Last Night," By Jeff Rosenstock


	4. Come on, Sweet Catastrophe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Skye loses control after falling asleep in Fitz's bunk.

_Bang_. Later, Leo couldn’t quite parse out what had actually woken him: the noise of his skull connecting with the floor, the blinding white light exploding behind his eyes, or the searing pain.

“What the—” His lamp flew off the desk and smashed against the wall, followed by his pictures and framed posters vibrating off their hangings and banging to the ground. As the floor pitched below him, they were plunged into complete darkness. “Skye?” He hissed, as glass from the ceiling lights showered his hair. He scrambled on the floor for his boxers and wiggled into them, feeling dizzy. “Skye?” he said, louder. She was thrashing on the bed, tossing and turning—lost in some sort of nightmare. He bent over to shake her by the shoulder but a particularly violent tremor sent him pitching back against the door of his bunk and spilling him out into the common space.

“Fitz? What the hell is going on?” May’s voice cut across the lounge from the kitchen floor, where she’d clearly tumbled. She got to her feet, touching a spot on her forehead with her fingertips, which came away dotted with blood.

She was wearing a pair of plaid flannel pajama pants and a v neck t shirt, but her hands were already crushed into fists as she looked around for an enemy to fight.

“Are we being shot out of the sky?” Coulson came down the spiral stairs from his office, gripping tightly onto the bannister.

“Um,” said Leo.

The whole bus shook violently, and Leo bit his tongue as he fell to one knee against the wall opposite the door to his bunk. Coulson barely hung on to the staircase, his bare feet slipping on the stairs.

“No impact damage from projectiles, sir,” called Mack, already checking the panels with a screwdriver between his teeth. “Let me just check the—“ he swore as a barrage of sparks came out of the panel toward his face.

“May, get to the bridge and land us as soon as you can. How far are we from base?”

“Less than an hour,” she shot over her shoulder as she ran toward the cockpit.

There was a series of bangs as everyone emerged from their bunks. In the chaos, no one noticed Leo trying to get back into his own room, grabbing the doorframe as the entire plane rolled sideways, tossing everyone around like loose marbles. Skye had rolled off the bed, slamming against the side of the room when the plane tipped. Leo scrabbled to grab her a bathrobe, something to cover her up. She was thrashing and muttering, still asleep somehow amid the shouting.

Mack’s voice yelled to everyone and no one, “It’s like something is ripping the damn plane apart!”

Leo could feel May struggling to regain control of the bus as all manner of alarms blared through the aircraft. He hauled himself up and in through the door, spitting out a mouthful of blood as he scrambled around for some clothes for Skye. He found another of his Cardigans and wrapped her in it. He wasn’t a big man but he liked his sweaters to swallow him up in comfort. As he pulled Skye closer to him, tucking her arms into the sleeves of the sweater, her eyelids fluttered open.

She smiled a dopey, half asleep smile at him. It lasted about a nanosecond before the plane plummeted in the air. Skye let out a blood churning shriek, covering her ears with her hands, and Leo heard glass shattering from several locations at once. He flinched, but tried to be comforting at the same time. “It’s okay, Skye, it’s me, Skye you’re awake,” he crooned, stroking her hair. He pulled her head to his chest, rocking her back and forth, making shhhhing sounds.

The plane swooped a few more times and then steadied. The flickering lights stopped flickering, Skye, however, was still shaking. “Fitz,” she breathed, “What did I do? What did I do?”

“It’s okay, it’s alright Skye, we’re all okay.”

“_I knew it_!” Leo whipped his head around so fast he cricked his neck. Massaging it, he saw Jemma standing in the doorway, pale legs sticking out from her pajama shorts, arms braced against the door to his bunk.

“J-Jemma,” he said, “Jemma calm—calm down-”

“Don’t you _dare_,” she breathed, “tell me to calm down.”

Skye shook more violently in his arms. Leo cast his eyes around the room. “Jemma, don’t,” he pleaded, watching the window shade start to rattle one more.

“You lied to me Leopold Fitz,” fumed Jemma, as the plane began to shake again.

“What the hell is happening in here?” Coulson appeared at Jemma’s elbow, taking in the scene.

“It’s me—It’s me I can’t stop it,” Skye yelled, dissolving in Leo’s arms as the plane surged again.

“Sir we can’t take much more of this!” Mack yelled from the other room.

Leo’s bed, which had been bolted to the floor and wall, shook loose and came careening across the room. He braced his shoulder against it, but it slammed into them both and pinned them to the wall. Skye must have hit her head because she slumped bonelessly against Leo’s chest and the shaking stopped immediately. The intervening silence was punctuated by alarm blasts.

“Fitz,” said Coulson slowly, “You wanna start talking to me?”

In answer, Leo spat another mouthful of blood onto the floor.

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” said Jemma, tossing her hands up. She turned around and stormed off, presumably to the lab.

“Mack?” Coulson called and he was at the door in an instant. Wordlessly, the two shifted Leo’s bed off himself and Skye, sliding it back into its place on the other side of the room.

“You should have Simmons check out that shoulder, Turbo,” said Mack.

“S’fine,” Leo muttered. Coulson grabbed one of Leo’s blankets and wrapped up Skye’s unconscious body, gingerly lifting her in his arms. Mack brushed his hand across Leo’s shoulder and he let out a yelp.

“Yeah,” said Mack, eyes full of concern under the sarcasm. “Seems fine.” He walked after Coulson and Skye out of the room. Leo made to follow. “Uh, ease up there Turbo,” Mack said, “maybe grab some pants?”

Leo flushed red and turned to the mess of clothes on his floor that had rocketed out of his drawers during the turbulence.

He eyed his shoulder in the mirror (shattered); it was already beginning to purple and as his adrenaline wore off, the pain was threatening to make its full appearance, but he had more pressing concerns. By the time Leo had wriggled into some pants, t shirt, and a button-down (inside out), May announced that they were landing at base.

Skye was in the med bay, under sedation. He chewed his lip watching Jemma as she worked, fiddling with the machines, her brow creased in concentration. As if she could feel his look she looked up, eyes locking with his. _Bloody Hell_, he thought. _If looks could kill_.

He hovered outside the Med Bay, sort of hoping everyone would forget about him.

“Fitz!” Coulson bellowed from down the hall. _No such luck_. “My office, now.”

He hesitated. It seemed as though they were wheeling Skye’s bed somewhere. May was by her head, guiding the gurney as Mack did the lion’s share of the pushing. Jemma raced after them with a tablet under one arm, pushing along some monitoring equipment with the other.

He made to follow them, but Coulson grabbed his upper arm. He winced.

“That wasn’t a request, Agent Fitz,” said Coulson in a hard voice.

“Where are they taking her?”

“That is none of your concern. With me, Fitz, now.”

Reluctantly, Leo followed Coulson through the labyrinth of hallways in the old SSR base. Coulson slammed the door of his office shut and went behind his desk, bending down to search a lower drawer.

“Sit,” he ordered.

He plunked two low ball glasses down on the desk, and poured an unmeasured glug of bourbon into each. He slid one to Fitz.

“Drink.”

Leo clutched the glass but didn’t take a sip. Coulson collapsed into his chair, looking exhausted and old beyond his years. “Fitz,” he said, gesturing, his voice pleading. Leo took a tentative sip from his glass. Coulson downed his in one and refilled it. The director allowed the silence to spiral on before he set his glass down with a clunk.

“Talk,” he said, leveling his gaze to Leo’s face.

Looking into the depths of his glass, Leo began. He started the tale, somewhat inexplicably, with himself and Jemma being fished out of the pacific by Nick Fury, which didn’t seem to have a lot to do with the situation at hand, but Coulson did not interrupt.

Leo didn’t leave anything out, and as he swirled his (now) empty bourbon glass, Coulson refilled it and still did not interrupt.

“I’m sorry I lied, sir,” he finished. “Simmons was getting hysterical over the possibilities of an alien contagion and poor Skye she just—”

“I understand,” Coulson said kindly. “But this situation is extremely volatile. My hold as director of Shield is so tenuous right now that it’s predicated on everyone here accepting it. If I appear to lose control, as I did when I was carving the map to the Kree temple on my desk and walls, people will question me. Shield itself isn’t even a true organization any more—so really we’ll all here by mutual agreement.” He looked at Leo with kind, but stern eyes. “I have to know absolutely everything that goes on here, at all times. We clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then I suggest you head to your bunk and get some rest.”

Leo stood, leaving his glass on the desk. As the door swung shut behind him, he heard Coulson let out a shaky sigh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title for this chapter is from the song "Hurricane" By Something Corporate


	5. Because of the Shame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fitz tries to sort through what happened after his talk with Coulson, but loses control himself when he finds out where Simmons brought Skye.

After tossing and turning for a few hours, Leo gave up on sleep and started wandering around the base. Before, if he was this upset he’d have beelined straight to the lab, hoping to lose himself in some project or other. But now, now the lab was a no man’s land and working on a project would only remind him of his many failings.

Instead, he pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sat, staring at nothing and wading around in the pool of anxiety he felt in his guts.

Leo heard a noise behind him and startled, unsure of how long he’d been spaced out.

“Sorry, mate,” said Hunter. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

He went to the fridge, pulled out two beers and sat across from Leo. Wordlessly, Hunter popped the bottles open and slid one across the table. They drank in silence for a while, until the bottles are about half empty.

“You should have told us,” said Hunter.   
“Yeah, maybe.” He didn’t know what else to say.

“I get why you didn’t, though.”

They finished their beers, and two more apiece, in a peaceful sort of a quiet. Somewhere in the background of Leo’s troubled mind it registered that he’d never seen Hunter be quiet for this long before. Eventually, Hunter went to bed, clapping Leo on the shoulder as he went on his way. Leo systematically shredded the labels off the empty bottles with his fingernails, sweeping the scraps into a neat little pile.

It was hard keeping a sense of time underground, but when Jemma entered the kitchen, Leo had to presume it was morning.

“Did you sit here all night?” Jemma’s voice was tired, but gentle. He didn’t answer. The question honestly didn’t compute right away.

“Fitz?” She snapped, regaining some of the bite of the previous evening.

He ignored the question, but addressed her with one of his own. “Where is she?”

Jemma sighed. “We had to move her downstairs, for her own safety—as much as everyone else’s.”

“Donwstairs? Downstairs where?”

“Now, Fitz, don’t get upset—”

“You—you put, you put her in containment?” He didn’t even realize he’d gotten to his feet until he heard the bang of his chair hitting the ground behind him.

“For her own—“

“She’s not a bloody criminal, Jemma!”

“Oh Fitz calm down—“

“She didn’t do anything wrong!”

“For heaven’s sake, Fitz, she nearly killed us all, herself included! None of us has any idea what's happened to her and for everyone’s safety—“

He didn’t stay to listen to the rest. He shouldered roughly past Jemma, ignoring her repeated attempts to justify locking Skye in the containment unit in the basement. Leo wrenched open the door and stomped down the stairs toward the basement level. This is the basement cell where they’d stuck Ward. They’d kept that from him too, now that he thought about it.

He sped up. All he could think about was Skye being forced to sleep alone in the hard, narrow bed, the same bed where Ward had slept before they’d made the absolutely bloody asinine decision to trade him to his brother in exchange for a public pardon for Shield. She’d been down there all alone, probably thinking he’d just abandoned her, leaving her to rot down there and wallowing in his own misery.

Agent Koenig had programmed the laser grid wall of the cell with a tablet that sat on a dock next to a solitary chair. Leo remembered turning off the oxygen, trying to squeeze a tiny bit of satisfaction from making Grant Ward suffer. The thought of Skye sitting there defenseless, the possibility that someone could starve her of air only a button push away, terrified him. He finally came skidding gracelessly into the waiting room. Someone had programmed the wall into opacity, so Leo seized the tablet and released the wall. Skye was curled up in the corner, the bed untouched. She’d been crying, he saw.

Alarms blared and a mechanical voice announced a possible security breach, that the cell had been compromised, but Leo ignored it. Skye scrambled to her feet and he ran across the threshold of the cell and wrapped her in his arms. Skye sobbed into his chest, and Leo couldn’t think of anything to say. He pressed kiss after kiss into the top of her head as she cried. She kept babbling apologies into the front of his shirt, her fingers clutching desperately at the fabric.

“Hey,” he said, “Look at me.”

She shook her head, and took a great shuddering breath as if she really was cut off from oxygen. He cupped her face with both of his hands, forcing her to look into his eyes.

“Fitz,” she breathed, as the alarm continued to ring. “I’m so sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for, Skye. You’ll see.” 

She shoved him away, hard enough that he stumbled back a few steps. "I almost _killed _you--all of you, you shouldn't be down here, you shouldn't be anywhere near me--"

The door behind him opened with a bang. “Fitz, what the hell are you doing?” May was first on the scene, of course.

Leo turned around to face May, shielding Skye with his body. “I’m getting my friend out of the bloody prison cell you people have shut her up in.”

“Fitz, get away from her,” said May in a deadly voice.

He didn’t move. He felt Skye press against his back, trembling. They could hear footsteps thundering down the stairs.

Coulson came around the frame of the door, the rest of the team not far behind. “Stand down, Fitz,” he said.

“I will not stand down until you all stop acting crazy!”

“Fitz none of us wants to hurt Skye,” said Bobbi in a soothing voice. “You know that.”

“I don’t know it! You’ve locked her in a little box underground that still stinks of Grant Ward!”

“Fitz,” pleaded Skye, her breath hot on the back of his shirt. He heard the door begin to rattle, and the metal chair began to skitter across the floor.

“Stand down Agent Fitz,” said Coulson again, his hand drifting toward the Icer in its holster on his hip.

“Skye is our friend—“

“Oh well, some friends you lot are then!”

“Fitz please,” said Skye, grabbing his hand and giving it a squeeze. “It’s okay.”

“It is not okay!” 

“It’s for Skye’s protection, mate,” said Hunter. “She’s safer down here.”

“And you’re all safe from me,” said Skye.

Leo turned toward her. “What?”

“Fitz I don’t know what’s happening to me,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt any of you—I’d never forgive myself.”

“Skye you don’t have to stay down here just because they’re all afraid.”

“Agent Fitz that is not your call to make,” began Coulson.

“Skye,” Leo said loudly, bulling over the director, “the only one I’m talking to, you don’t have to stay down here.” He grabbed her hands and pulled them up toward his lips, brushing a soft kiss against her knuckles. She winced.

“What’s wrong?” He asked her.

“Nothing,” she said, pulling her hands away and turning her back.

“Skye, what is it?” He reached for her hand again and grabbed her sleeve, rolling it up past the elbow. She let out a cry of pain, and Leo was horrified to see deep, angry bruises purpling from the soft skin of her wrist up to the crook of her arm. The room gave a violent lurch before Skye’s eyes rolled back into her head and she fainted.

Leo caught her before she fell and eased her down onto the bed. “Simmons!” He yelled, frantic, as a reflex—hating the pathetic, panicked voice that slipped out of his mouth. Calling to Simmons for help had been natural as breathing, Before, and old habits died hard apparently. Then suddenly she was there at the bedside, squeezing his shoulder before nudging him out of the way to examine Skye’s injuries.

“I’m going to have to take some x-rays to be sure but it seems as though she has sustained heavy fractures all through her arms—possibly whatever is causing her to vibrate her surroundings is coming from inside her very bones. I’ve never seen anything like it!”

“Come on, up you get Turbo,” said Mack suddenly, lifting Leo gently by his elbow. “Let’s give the Doc some breathing room here.”

“No—wait I can’t just,” but he was being steered out of the cell. May lifted the tablet out of his hands.

“It’s okay, Fitz,” she said uncharacteristically soft. “I’ll stay here with Skye. Go get some sleep.”

“You look dead on your feet, Turbo, come on. Let’s get you to bed.” Leo could hardly argue as he swayed where he stood, adrenaline leaking out of him like air from a punctured balloon.

He craned his neck over his shoulder as the team frog marched him from the room, and the last he saw was Coulson pressing his fingers to the screen of the tablet that controlled the cell, turning the translucent laser grid opaque, hiding Skye and Simmons from his view entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter comes from the song "Because of the Shame," by Against Me!


	6. I Made the Bed, Just Not That Well

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Skye adjusts to her temporary quarters, determined to help the team on a mission. Jemma confronts Leo in the lab about their relationship.

A few mornings later, Leo found himself in the kitchen toasting Poptarts, brown sugar cinnamon ones which he knew were Skye’s favorite. The girl had a full blown Poptart addiction. Leo privately suspected it was a nostalgic remnant of her hacker life, living out of her van, “by choice,” he could almost hear her say. He smiled. The toaster pinged, shooting the pastries upwards, and Leo wrapped them in a paper towel and went downstairs.

Skye was sitting on her bed, crosslegged, laptop off to one side and a tablet in her lap. Leo noticed a watch on her wrist he’d never seen there before. Her brow was furrowed, brown eyes flicking between the tablet and the lap top screen. She took no notice of Leo’s arrival at first, and he was content to watch her working. With her tongue poking out between her teeth and her hands flying over the keys, she looked totally at ease.

Leo cleared his throat, gesturing with his folded paper towel. Skye looked up with a distracted dart of her eyes before her face broke into a warm, but tired smile. “Hey, you.”

“H-hi.”

She set the laptop aside and walked up to the wall of her cell. They looked at each other awkwardly for a moment.

“Hungry?”

“Starving. I’ve been up for hours.” Skye actually had a control for her new sleeping quarters, a gesture of trust. They all knew she’d never hurt anyone on purpose, and didn’t really see it necessary to keep her locked up like a prisoner.

Skye was still clearly terrified, however. Instead of releasing the entire wall, she made a few keystrokes on the control, opening only about a six inch square in the shield wall. Leo reached in, passing her breakfast. He gave her hand a little squeeze as he released the pastries, and Skye gave him a tiny smile.

“So, erm, what?” He waved his other hand toward the array on Skye’s bed as she closed the wall again.

“Coulson heard some chatter about a possible disturbance in Portugal, so I’m checking it out. I think one of our old friends might be here paying us a visit.” Skye tucked both poptarts between her teeth and ran over to grab her tablet. She flipped it around to show a freezeframe taken from a cell phone video. Wearing an unmistakable scowl and, inexplicably, a leather jacket in lieu of her trademark armor, was Lady Sif of Asgard.

“Sif?”

“Definitely,” mumbled Skye through a mouthful of Poptart. She leaned a shoulder against the cell wall. “But watch this.” Skye pressed play on the video, watching as Sif got into a violent tussle on a crowded boardwalk with what looked like an average human. He swung a short, blunt weapon directly at Lady Sif’s chest, sending her flying back over the edge of the boardwalk as passersby screamed. She froze the footage again on the man’s face.

Leo furrowed his brow, and gestured a loop de loop with his finger.

“Rewind?” Asked Skye.

He nodded. Skye dragged her finger back along the playbar. “There!”

She paused, right at the moment the mystery guy’s weapon connected with Sif’s chest. The video wasn’t high enough quality to make out the details of the weapon, and the guy had been swinging it so fast it appeared blurred. However, where it made contact with lady Sif, it looked like an electrical shock of some kind pulsed from the weapon through her body.

“Have you seen anything like that before?” Skye asked him.

He shook his head. They both startled at the sound of feet on the stairs.

“Good, Fitz, you’re here,” said Coulson. “Skye showed you the footage?”

He nodded.

“Well, I need you on this, Fitz. I need to know what that weapon is, and where this guy got it. And Skye,” Coulson turned as if this were a totally normal Holo-table briefing, “I need you to find Sif. We need to find out if she’s hurt and what she’s doing here.”

Coulson turned to leave and Leo hastened to follow him up the stairs. The brief façade of normalcy shattered behind them as they left Skye in the basement, alone. Leo turned at the top of the stairs, watching as Skye looked around the room, looking tiny and vulnerable. She glanced back down at the tablet, and used the control for the cell to render the wall opaque.

Leo couldn’t leave her down there all alone, so he marched to the lab and grabbed his laptop, an external monitor, and a few other components and headed back downstairs to the containment room. He set up camp on the floor next to a power strip, arraying his equipment before him. Leo slid down to the floor, back against the wall, and powered on his computer. Once he was settled in, he raised his knuckles and rapped on the wall. He felt a slight tingle connecting with the electromagnetic shield of the cell wall, and the knock didn’t so much make a noise as it did send ripples across the surface. A few seconds later the opacity of the wall flickered and Skye stood looking down at him.

Leo said nothing, just smiled up at her and then returned to his screens, pulling up a database of known alien weaponry that SHIELD had been accumulating since the Battle of New York. Skye leaned her back to the wall beside Leo, the wall of the cell between them. She slid down, sitting next to him and looked over with a warm smile. She brushed the controls of the cell and a small window a bit taller than a mail slot opened between them, flush with the floor. Skye slid the fingers of her right hand through the gap, and Leo’s hand was there to meet hers. He gripped her hand, and continued his perusal of the weapons catalog. “Can you beam over the footage?” He asked her. Without replying she pinged him the data from her tablet as she continued to comb twitter for clues that could get them Lady Sif’s exact location.

They worked in a happy silence for a while, exchanging requests and theories back and forth. It was lovely, really, Leo reflected. Very calm.

“Fitz!” Naturally. Coulson came back down the stairs. “I’ve been looking all over for you. What the hell are you doing?”

“W-working?”

“Why aren’t you in the lab?”

“I like him here,” said Skye. Releasing Leo’s hands, she stood up, meeting Coulson’s eye with a stubborn jut of her jaw, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Well, I need him in the field.”

Leo startled. “The field, sir?”

“We got a bead on the boardwalk where Sif and our Mystery guy were duking it out. I need you on the ground with Mack and Hunter to get whatever evidence you can from the scene. Wheels up in ten.”

Coulson was already turning to trudge up the stairs. Leo scrambled to his feet, arse completely numb from sitting on the hard stone floor.

They stared at each other for a beat before Leo jerked his finger toward the stairs. “I better, erm….”

“Yeah.” Skye scooped up her laptop and retreated to her bed.

He was almost to the door at the top of the stairs when he heard her call, “Be careful out there, Fitz.”

He nodded.

As Leo wound through the base to collect the gear he’d need for fieldwork, he saw Coulson talking in the kitchen with May and an unfamiliar gentleman. He was tall, black, good looking—seemed perfectly at ease in the SHIELD base even though Leo had never seen him before. He approached them.

“Sir,” he said, “May.”

They nodded. “Fitz this is Doctor Andrew Garner,” said Coulson. Leo shook the man’s hand. “He’s a consulting Psychiatrist we brought in to have a chat with Skye.”

He raised his eyebrows. He could hear her now: “_You brought me a Shrink?_” But Leo smiled politely and what he said was, “Oh that’s lo-lovely.” Dr. Garner tilted his head to the side, regarding Leo with a quizzical sort of professional concern.

May put her hand firmly under the Doctor’s elbow and steered him away. “One thing at a time,” He heard her mutter.

Leo excused himself and went to the lab. Jemma was there, working on something with her back to him. He cleared his throat.   
  


“Ah, Fitz,” she said, without turning. “I know you’re heading out but d’you have a second to look at these?”

He ambled over. In front of Jemma were replicas of human arms, wearing some sort of black gauntlets. Leo reached out and touched the fabric.

“It’s a compression microfiber,” she explained excitedly.

“What’s it for?” He asked.

“For Skye,” she said, as though explaining the obvious. “It will help heal the fractures on her arms while dampening the effects of the shaking.”

“Dampen the effects?” Leo repeated, “Like, stop her powers?”

“Well, that is the ultimate goal, yes,” said Jemma, “But these aren’t quite strong enough—” her face faltered at the look Leo was giving her. “What?”

“Jemma,” he said, his voice pleading.

“What?” She repeated. “These gloves—”

“Shackles, you mean!”

“These gloves,” Jemma said, louder than before, “are going to help heal our friend and minimize the danger caused by—”

“Jemma stop!” Leo’s voice raised to a shout. “Can’t—can’t you see what you’re doing?”

“Can’t you see you might not be_ entirely_ objective here?”

There it was, in the air between them.

“Is that what this is about?” he flung back at her, “You’re jealous?”

“_Jealous?_” Jemma spat, and Leo flinched away from her. He’d spoken to wound, without thinking. “You think I’m _jealous_?” She took a step toward him, and he took one away.

Jemma sighed. “Of course, I’m jealous, Fitz.”

That certainly was the last thing he expected to hear. “What?”

Jemma smiled at him, a true smile—but a sad one. “We shared everything, once. Everything. People used to think of us as one unit. A team. Then Ward pushed us out of that plane.”

Leo gripped the desk, trying to steady himself as he heard the familiar sucking sound and the blood pumping in his ears. “I remember,” he choked out.

“Do you remember what you said to me, before you blew the world apart?” Asked Jemma, looking him dead in the face. “I thought you were going to die, that you were dead already when Fury fished us out of the water.”

Leo swallowed, still struggling to remain here with Jemma, in the lab—focusing on her words and not on the feeling of water filling his lungs.

She continued, taking another step toward him. “Then you came ‘round and I was so happy to hear your voice again but you were…” she trailed away.

“Broken,” he supplied, looking at the floor.

“Hurting,” she said firmly. “Different. I—I really thought you’d heal better without me there hovering over you and,” her breath caught in her chest. “I couldn’t bear to see you like that.”

Leo looked up and saw that her eyes glistening with tears. “So you left.”

“I left,” she agreed, her voice barely above a whisper. “I was the only one suited for the mission, and it was an important one. I thought about you every day. I missed you so much.”

Leo was trembling from head to foot._ I missed you too_. But he couldn’t say it. Jemma was still moving closer.

“Coulson told me that you were healing, that you were coming back to the world a bit,” she went on. _A bloody lie_, thought Leo. “And then, I came back and—and you wouldn’t even look at me. Now you’re sneaking around, you lied to me. You altered results here, in our lab. The lab we built together.”

He couldn’t deny it. Science had been their sanctuary, and he’d soiled it. Leo sighed, looking up at the ceiling.

“You’re farther away from me than you’ve ever been,” said Jemma. She squeezed her eyes shut, tears sparkling on her eyelashes. Jemma took a deep breath, steadying herself. “But when I came back and found you still hurting, I hoped it would be me that could steady you. I thought that’s what you wanted.”

He couldn’t think of anything to say. That_ had_ been what he wanted, but now—things were different. Complicated. “It’s not me that’s broken,” he said quietly. “It’s us.” _Fitzsimmons_.

Jemma nodded. Then she wiped her eyes and hitched a watery smile up onto her face. “Anyway,” she said, turning back to her work. “I think you’d best be off. I’ve got to run some tests on these before I show them to Director Coulson and Doctor Garner.”

Leo marveled at the way she could change tacks like that. _So bloody English_.

“Fitz!” Barked May over coms. “We were supposed to be wheels up four minutes ago.”

He couldn’t leave like this. He couldn’t. He rolled onto the balls of his feet, bobbing back and forth. Nervously, he reached a shaking hand forward and squeezed Jemma’s shoulder, so briefly. Before he could withdraw, she covered his hand with her own and rested her temple against his forearm.

“FITZ!”

Like he’d been jolted with lightening, Leo snatched his hand back and practically ran to the quin jet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title for this chapter comes from the song "Out on The Town," by fun.


	7. Somewhere Lost Inside the Man that I'm Not

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sif lands on earth with no memories and gives the team a lot of questions.

Leo, Hunter and Mack combed the pier for forensic evidence. They were slowed by Hunter pausing constantly to practice his Horatio Cane impersonation.

“Your accent is bloody abysmal,” muttered Leo, crouching to examine some gouges in the wood of the pier.

“This was some fight,” said Mack, looking around at the damage. He glanced to where May, Coulson, and Sif stood by a fried dough stand. They were attempting to jog her memory. She’d been suffering from amnesia and didn’t recognize any of them.

On their last mission, Sif had been sure, confident, brave and calculating. She now seemed hesitant, anxious, and wrong footed. Leo’s heart ached for her; he knew how that felt.

Hunter and Mack tried to recreate the fight as Leo took samples and talked to Jemma over comms, sending her samples.

Leo allowed himself to indulge in a small fantasy; it was just a normal mission. Talking with Jemma, exchanging theories. His voice felt steady and his hands shook only minimally. Outside of the lab, in the fresh ocean air, he felt almost himself again.

“Fitz! Mack! Hunter!” Coulson’s bark startled all three of them. “We just got word that Bobbi is engaging the hostile at a local hospital. We’ve got to get back to the bus and get over there to back her up.”

***

May, Hunter, Sif, and Mack all deployed into the hospital to back up Bobbi—but the hostile was gone the time they’d arrived. Bobbi was pretty banged up, but conscious. She reported that the guy was full on blue (“How fascinating!” said Jemma) and was hijacking nitrogen sources from the hospital to power some sort of portable device that could disguise him to seem human.

“Kree are blue,” said May. She and Coulson exchanged a glance.

Sif frowned. “A Kree visiting your world is certain to be no good.” Her sharp eyes flitted between members of the team as they all avoided her gaze in turn. “Why do you not wish to speak of this Kree?”

“Well,” said Coulson evasively, “When you visited us before you said Kree had never been to earth. So it’s weird that you wouldn’t have known.”

“Director!” Skye’s voice crackled over the comms. “I think I’ve found something.”

“Excuse me.” Coulson smiled as he withdrew, and Leo hastened to follow him down to containment.

What Skye had found happened to be a solid lead as to where the Kree may have gone. The whole team was able to spring an ambush and bring him into custody. Back at the playground, they all watched with bated breath as Sif attempted to interrogate the Kree, who finally introduced himself as Vin-Tak.

He claimed he was only visiting Earth because a long buried Kree signal had been activated. Leo frowned, realizing that everyone on the team knew exactly what he was talking about. The Temple. The Obelisk.

Vin-Tak was found with a sleek metal trunk. While Coulson and the rest of the team assisted with the interrogation, he commanded Jemma and Leo examine the trunk. After several in deapth scans, verifying the crate itself wasn’t some sort of weapon, they were able to pry it open. Leo gasped. It was full of slots that looked to be the exact size and dimensions of the original Obelisk. “Bloody hell,” breathed Jemma, looking at Leo with absolute terror at the implication contained in the otherwise empty crate.

Jemma made to radio Coulson, but the entire base gave a violent pitch that sent her sprawling to the ground.

Skye. Without a backward look, Leo sprinted from the room. He pelted down the hallway toward containment, completely ignoring the furious tangle of batons and fists that was Hunter, Vin-Tak, and Bobbi.

As he banged open the door at the top of the basement stairs, he looked down and saw lady Sif, growling furiously as she plunged her sword into the digital grid of the containment chamber. Sparks crackled around the Asgardian metal of the blade. Leo scrambled down the stairs, the base shaking like mad. He almost lost his footing several times.

“Sif!” he yelled, “Stop!”

He grabbed her arm. “Let go, Leopold Fitz,” She said, gritting her teeth. She continued to use her sword to try to destroy the containment wall. Leo used all his strength to yank her arm loose—but her muscles were like iron bars and her sword didn’t budge. She did, however, turning her head to fix Leo with a calculating stare. She released her sword with her left hand and placed it on Leo’s chest. With a practiced movement, she shoved him.

The air rushed out of Leo’s lungs with an audible woof and his next sensation was his back and head slamming into the basement wall opposite. Dazed, he slid down the wall, slumped bonelessly on the ground. Leo trembled, trying to will himself to get up, but things were getting foggy. He shook his head but that sent the room swooping around him even worse than the tremors coming from Skye.

“Stop, S-S-if,” he managed a whisper before losing it completely.

Leo woke sometime later in the med bay. His head and back ached ferociously, and as he turned his head to the side he felt like an ice pick was plunging between his eyes.

“Fitz!” gasped Jemma. She pressed down on his shoulders. “Don’t move your neck! I haven’t done any scans yet to determine the extent of your injuries.”

He ignored her, rolling over to his side. He saw that Skye was resting in the adjacent bed, looking almost peaceful. A worried looking May was watching over her, smoothing the tangled bangs on her forehead. She stopped immediately when she saw Leo watching her, something angry and embarrassed fluttering across her face that she’d been caught in such a tender act.

“What-What? What? Ugh.” His words came out a stuttering groan.

“She iced herself,” said Jemma, worry creasing her brow. “Again. And Director Coulson convinced Lady Sif that we can handle any threat posed by Skye’s new….condition.”

Leo relaxed back on his pillows, nodding weakly.

“Fitz,” said Jemma, timid. His name a question on her lips. “You really should rest. I really need to make sure Lady Sif didn’t damage your spine. I’d like to do some scans.”

All he could do was nod again. It would be just his luck if Sif smashing his head against the wall had undone whatever meager recovery he’d been able to achieve over the past few months. Too late, he felt the certain press of Jemma’s thin fingers at the crook of his arm and the pinch of a needle before he was out cold again.

He was alone in the med bay when we woke up again. The steady beep of the heart monitor told him his own vitals were normal. He squinted at the screen, double checking the numbers. He sat up with a groan and saw a metal chart on his bedside table. He picked it up and perused it, recognizing the notes in Jemma’s handwriting. He brushed his fingers across the page, smiling. People were always surprised at what an absolute chicken-scratch disaster her handwriting could be, especially when she wrote quickly.

According to her notes, his scans had all come back fine. Thank goodness he knew her shorthand. He sat up, feeling a little dizzy, and a dull ache settled in from the crown of his head to his tailbone. If he was honest, Leo was sick unto death of being tossed around like a rag doll. Cracking his back, he swung his feet around to stand up. The clock on the wall read that it was close to midnight. Leo ambled straight to his bunk, where he found the copy of _Six Easy Pieces_ that Skye had left there. He changed into some pajamas and stuffed the book into the pocket. Rifling through his closet, he selected a soft navy blue cardigan from the few of his favorites that remained. _I’ll be down to my skids before Skye’s done with me_, he thought, slinging the cardigan over his shoulder. The base was still and calm and Leo didn’t run into anyone between his bunk and the containment unit.

Down in the basement, Leo saw that Sif’s blade really hadn’t done any damage to the wall and took a brief moment of pride in his part in developing the technology. Skye stood when she saw him approach.

“Fitz you can’t be down here,” she said. Skye hugged herself, wearing only a thin tee shirt and leggings.

He ignored that. “Th-thought, I, erm, thought.” _For fuck’s sake_. He held up the book.

“Oh God,” she said looking at the ceiling. “This is my punishment. They sent you to torture me.”

For a minute she sounded like her old self. He waited as she brushed a few key strokes across the control of the unit. He stepped inside and she re-closed the grid wall behind them.

“Here,” he said. He wrapped her in the cardigan and in his arms. She pressed her face into his chest.

“Are you ok?” She asked, her breath hot on the front of his shirt.

“I’m just fine,” he whispered. He released her and went to the bed, propping his pillow up against the wall so he could nestle against it. He patted the mattress beside him.

Skye gave an exaggerated sigh and lied down, resting her head on his lap. He ran his right hand idly through her hair.

“Now,” he said, “how far did you get with Dr. Feynman?”

She giggled, pressing a small kiss against his thigh. “Not very.”

“Ah, good, the beginning,” he said, “a very good place to start.” With his free hand, he flipped the book open and began to read to her, and through Dr. Feynman’s words he found an ease of speaking. Even when Skye interrupted him with a question he found he could answer it, steady as a stone.

“Ah now Skye,” he said excitedly as he turned a page at the end of a chapter. “This is one of the best bits! It’s just—“ he paused, realizing her breathing had slowed, coming in soft little snores. Skye had fallen asleep, curled at his side under his cardigan. Carefully, he reached around her and pulled the blanket up over her and then resumed his soft stroking of her hair. He read to himself, silently, for a while, making some mental notes of what he’d love to draw her attention to as they progressed through the book.

Skye stirred slightly, her hand wandering up to find his fingers threading through her hair. She pulled his hand to her lips, brushing a soft kiss to his fingertips. As she snuggled closer to him, he felt her smile.

Leo woke sometime later full of regret—or at least, his spine was full of regret. Skye snoozed on as Leo fidgeted in extreme discomfort._ Good Lord this girl sleeps like the dead_. Leo wiggled around, gently maneuvering to lie down. He hissed out a painful breath as his muscles unclenched. With a gentle nudge, he pulled a sleepy Skye up so that her head rested on his chest. She wriggled in as close as possible. Leo wrapped his arms around her, and drifted back to sleep as his spine straightened out against the mattress.

Sunlight streaming in the window pried Leo’s eyelids open. He sighed, his hand instantly groping to find Skye’s.

_Wait. Sunlight_? That didn’t make any sense. Leo sat bolt upright. The basement had no windows, no way for sunlight to enter—his eyes searched around the room, uncomprehending. He was tucked into his own bunk.

Had he dreamed going downstairs the night before? Looking around, confused, he saw that _Six Easy Pieces_ was indeed missing from his night stand. He leapt out of bed, moving quickly but stiffly across the floor to his closet. As he suspected, the navy blue cardigan was also gone. Not a dream. _What the…?_

He slid open his door, face to face with Mack. “Let’s take a walk, Turbo,” he said, seizing Leo by the elbow and steering him down the hallway toward the kitchen.

“How—How?”

“Director’s orders,” said Mack gruffly. “I brought you up here around five this morning.”

Leo looked up curiously. Mack said nothing, so Leo planted his heels, jerking his arm out of Mack’s grip.

“What’s happening?” he asked.

Mack’s mouth opened and closed, and he avoided Leo’s eyes. It wasn’t Mack who answered, though. 

It was Director Coulson.

“I’m sending Skye away.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title for this chapter came from the song "I don't wanna be an asshole anymore," by the Menzingers.


End file.
